Centaurea - Crinum

Centaurea atropurpurea £5
A fine tall plant with excellent silver grey foliage when grown dry and lean. Wine red knobby flower heads. 150cm. Previously listed by us, and everyone else who grew it, as benoistii.
Centaurea bella £4
Silvery pinnate leaved clumper with decent sized lilac-pink flowers on 30cm stems. Sun, reasonable drainage.
Centaurea 'Caramia' £4
A very nice plant which doesn't seem to be getting about as quickly as I'd have expected. 30-60cm tall, with undivided greyish green leaves and purple-pink rayed flower heads over a long summer season. It's in the area of  C. phrygia, perhaps a hybrid with jacea - some intermediate forms have been recorded in the wild.
Centaurea cheiranthifolia £5
Lovely large palest yellow cornflowers. Grey-green leaves. 40cm.
Centaurea fischeri £5
Rather similar, with pale pink flowers.
Centaurea kotschyana £4
Low growing, with rather shiny green leaves, and purple thimbly flower heads: yellow stamens contrast beautifully.
Centaure montana 'Carnea' £5
Light pinky-lilac variety of the common perennial cornflower. Tough and easy in sun.
florets more blue than violet, the centre purple-pink. Narow grey green leaves, gently running habit. Not quick, but worth the effort. Well drained soil in sun.
Centaurea montana 'Lady Flora Hastings' £5
As above, but nice spidery white flowers with contrasting dark stamens.
Centaurea montana 'Ochroleuca' £5
An interesting pale yellow flowered form, later flowering than most. I could believe it is a hybrid with cheiranthifolia.
Centaurea montana 'Purple Heart' £5
White rays, proper purple centre. A no-nonsense perennial cornflower
Centaurea montana 'Purpurea' £5
As above, with unambiguously purple flowers.
Centaurea atropurpurea x orientalis £4.50
Yellow knapweed heads, finely divided foliage. Good in a sunny site, and perennial. 'Totnes Fat Lemon' is having a well earned rest from brutal annual division this year, but these sister seedlings are pretty good.
Centaurea thracica £5
Obscure but interesting perennial from the eastern Balkans. The bold leaves are distinctively lobed - I suppose lyrate is the word. Knobby yellow flower heads, 50cm. Sunny site. Taxonomically isolated, and at one time placed in Serratula.
Centaurea triumfettii 'Blue Dreams' £4.50
Thanks to Joe Sharman for this pretty plant from a seed collection on a Turkish roadside by him and Alan Leslie. Large flowers with properly blue outer florets and violet centres. About 30cm tall in flower and strongly summer-dormant.
Centaurea triumfettii 'Hoar Frost' £4.50
A sister seedling to 'Blue Dreams', more vigorously growing. Good sized white flowers with pink-purple tinted centres in May. A great plant for a sunny, well drained place.
Centaurea 'Blewit' NEW CULTIVAR NAME £5
Previously, and correctly, sold as triumfettii x montana. Blue montana-like flowers at the tops of unbranched stems to 75cm, with a more open, running habit than montana, but still tough in the garden. The result of one of Joe Sharman's experiments. His accidentally giving it to us in place of another plant gives rise to one dimension of the Sharmanic pun in the cultivar name. Unlike anything else, and very attractive.
Chaerophyllum hirsutum 'Roseum' £4
Universally known as 'Pink Cow Parsley', but actually a Rough Chervil, which makes it even better since it's a sound perennial. Classic.
Chamerion (Epilobium) angustifolium 'Album' £5
The White Willowherb, valuable as a splendidly clump-forming back-of-the-border plant. Dies down completely in winter; pure white flowers on 1m or taller stems in early summer. One of those white flowers which is properly, opaquely, beautifully white.
Chasmanthe bicolor £5
The hardiest Chasmanthe, but still an outdoor prospect only in very mild coastal gardens, in a place which dries out in summer. Exotic looking swept-back sunbird-pollinated orange flowers in winter on a crocosmia-looking plant. Unlike crocosmias, it grows in winter and goes dormant in summer.
Chelonopsis yagiharana £4
A bushy, wiry-based perennial reaching about 40cm in flower by early sutumn. The flowers are good sized, wine-red of typical labiate shape. If you've already got C. moschata, you don't want both.
Chloranthus fortunei £4.50
A whorl of four leaves, purple/brown tinted when young, on each 30cm stem, and little white
flowers in May. A hardy clumper for woodland conditions. Very peculiar, very attractive.
Chondropetalum tectorum £5
And now for something completely different, a restio. In Europe we have grasses, sedges and rushes; in southern Africa the family Restionaceae should be added to the list. This example makes a dense clump of whippy green stems to 1.2m, attractively brown scaled, with little brown rushy flower clusters at the top. Hardy in milder gardens on acidic soil, it should not get too dry. Two species have until recently been confused under this name. The larger one, more common in gardens, has now been renamed.
Chrysosplenium macrophyllum  £4.50
The golden saxifrage that thinks it's a Bergenia. Round bristly leaves, new rosettes forming at the ends of obscene fat hairy stolons. Flowers quite large but uninteresting compared with the foliage. Mad ground cover for a woodsy bed.
Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum' £5
The classic crimson-purple flowered species for the border. 1.2m.
Cirsium sp. white £4
Basal rosettes of shiny, only weakly prickly-edged leaves. Fine white flower heads on 1.5m stems in autumn. Some people say it's Serratula bulgarica, but I agree with Victor Meldrew on that. An excellent plant, anyway. Thanks to Roger and Sue Norman.
Convallaria majalis var. rosea £4
Lily of the Valley is one of those infuriating plants that likes some people/gardens and not others, for no discernible reason. This is the pink form...
Convallaria majalis 'Haldon Grange' £4.50
…while this is a butch plant, triploid I'm told, with a cream margin to the apical third of the leaf…
Convallaria majalis 'Vic Pawlowski's Gold' £5
...and this has particularly good yellow stripes to the leaves; we've hardly ever seen a reversion.
Coptis japonica var. major £4.50
From the backwaters of the Ranunculaceae comes this small Northern genus for cool, humusy positions. Finely divided, but rather stiff, ternate leaves to 25cm, and tiny white flowers in autumn, as the leaves go down, with extraordinary whorls of seed pods with the new leaves in spring. Gently running. Very rarely seen.
Corydalis leucanthema DJHC 752 £4
A fibrous rooted species for shade. Rather substantial leaves, grey and somewhat marbled in silver. Pink-and-white flowers in spring. 15cm.
Corydalis 'Kingfisher' £4
Much more compact and less running than the next two,  it is a really lovely sky blue in flower; cashmeriana x flexuosa.
Corydalis 'Spinners' £4
There are many flexuosa/elata hybrids around now. We still consider this and the next to be the finest. 'Spinners' is close to elata in appearance with scented indigo blue flowers, but bulks up more densely and generously, as with flexuosa.
Corydalis 'Tory MP' £4
This one is more obviously intermediate. It's tall (to 75cm), forming a vigorous, dense, spreading clump, with intense blue flowers and red tinted stems. It flowers for an unusually long time in late spring and summer, then may repeat in autumn after a summer recess. It grows well in full sun as well as partial shade. I've recently been advised to find a Lib-Dem species with which to hybridize it.
Crinum 'Ellen Bosanquet' £6
An old hybrid, with spreading leaves and little neck to the bulb. Flowers a warm colour at the red end of pink. Once large and deep, the massive bulbs are hardy.
Crinum from Glasgow £6
An old cultivated plant (not hardy in Scotland!) which I've no hope of naming - perhaps an old hybrid. Palest pink flowers with a very long perianth tube, most attractive, capable of flowering on relatively small bulbs. Thanks to Paul Matthews.
Crinum moorei £6
Palest pink, well formed flowers on 1.5m stems. Perfectly hardy in the mildest gardens, such as Coleton Fishacre where it is one of the glories of late summer. Give it a warm, sheltered site or pot elsewhere.
Crinum x powellii AGM £6
Tough and hardy. Luxuriant foliage, and bright pink flowers to 1.2m in summer.
Crinum x powellii 'Album' AGM £6
Clean white flowers, of slightly better form. Divisions of our own stock which really does have white flowers, unlike some you find in the bulb trade.